Mona Baie considers the significance of naming practices and the pitfalls of linguistic hegemony in the medical humanities through the example of the German teaching and research field GTE (History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine).
“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, expressing her frustration at the importance everyone assigns to her lover’s family name, while for her, he is simply an individual she adores and cares for. Juliet’s question resonates with the field of medical humanities, where naming has become as contentious as it is significant. While scholars have begun to prioritise capabilities over designations in the notoriously difficult-to-define field (Viney et al. 2015), the proliferation of labels such as critical medical humanities, health humanities, global and queer medical humanities underscores the enduring importance of naming practices. Names highlight research agendas, establish institutional realities and appeal to funding bodies – they are powerful tools of academic world-making.
The issue becomes even more complicated when viewed through a multicultural and multilingual lens. As repeatedly shown in The Polyphony’s Multilingual MedHums series, medical humanities-related initiatives with diverse names have emerged globally. Grouping these under the Anglophone umbrella term “medical humanities” would overlook their unique institutional histories, semantic nuances and research visions – much like searching for the keyword “medical humanities” to grasp a country’s research activities can result in overlooking entire academic branches. As this article will illustrate, this applies particularly to the context of Germany, where the often-considered “small” field of medical humanities has a differently named yet kindred counterpart: GTE, short for Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin (History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine).
Medical humanities in Germany?
In Germany, the field of medical humanities is generally considered underdeveloped compared to countries like the UK and neighbouring Switzerland (Deutsches Ärzteblatt 2016; Witt et al. 2024, 7). To be sure, the field has seen significant growth since 2015, when the first professorship in medical humanities was established at the Charité in Berlin, initially held by medical historian Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach and currently held by medical historian and ethicist Susanne Michl. Since then, two new institutes have been founded: in 2019, the former Institute for Medical History at Bonn University’s medical faculty was renamed the Institute for Medical Humanities; and in 2022, the Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research (IMHAR) was founded at the Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen (University of Applied Sciences and Arts) in Ottersberg.
In addition, various projects and research initiatives associated with the medical humanities have emerged from both humanities and medical faculties. Notably, these initiatives predominantly use the English term “medical humanities” much more frequently than its literal German translation, “Medizinische Geisteswissenschaften,” thus highlighting their connection to the UK and US-based medical humanities scenes. In 2016, Pascal Fischer and Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio published the anthology Literatur und Medizin – interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu den “Medical Humanities” (Literature and Medicine – Interdisciplinary Contributions to the “Medical Humanities”), which promoted a shift towards medical humanities, particularly in literary studies.
The growing traction of the field in literary studies is evidenced by several recent publishing initiatives. The Bielefeld-based publisher Transcript, the Swiss publisher Schwabe (with editors from Berlin, Bonn, Lausanne and Fribourg) and the Berlin-based publisher De Gruyter have recently included a medical (or medical and health) humanities series in their programmes. All three series publish studies at the intersections of the humanities, cultural studies and social sciences, with a strong representation of literary studies thus far.
Undergraduate and postgraduate courses bearing medical or health humanities in their title – often taught jointly by medical and philosophical faculties and open to both medical and humanities students – have also been introduced at universities in Bielefeld, Düsseldorf, Köln and Hamburg. Additionally, initiatives like the Jahrbuch Literatur und Medizin (Yearbook Literature and Medicine), the German Network for Narrative Medicine and the DFG Network on Literary Disability Studies contribute to the field without explicitly using medical humanities as their designation; however, they reference the term and the respective research field in their publications.
Despite these developments, research that aligns itself with the field of medical humanities seems to have remained a relatively minor presence in German academia, compared to the UK. This is particularly surprising considering that an important catalyst for the field was the rise of bioethics and an ensuing focus on patients’ rights and the legal frameworks of the doctor-patient-relationship in the aftermath of World War II (see Elsner and Pietrzak-Franger 2024, 4–5). Shouldn’t the country that was home to the medical crimes of the Nazi regime and responsible for the catastrophe of the Second World War be all the more interested in researching the politics of medicine, emphasising patients’ rights and medical ethics?
GTE, a teaching project in flux
German academia has indeed responded to the country’s history in various ways, one of which was the establishment of GTE (History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine). GTE emerged from a long history of medico-historical scholarship at German medical faculties, with its current format resulting from initiatives by medical historians and medical ethicists starting in the 1980s. A key motivation was the joint interest of medical historians and ethicists to address the country’s National Socialist past and to incorporate a historically informed, critical perspective on medical practice and its societal implications into the medical curriculum (Fangerau and Gadebusch Bondio 2015, esp. 43–44; see also Steger 2011, 7–19). The cross-sectional subject was officially introduced in 2002, with the revision of the medical licensing regulations (ÄApprO) mandating all medical students to acquire knowledge in the areas of historical, ethical and epistemological aspects of medicine. This change in regulations challenged medical faculties to develop suitable teaching content and methods, resulting in diverse approaches including lectures, seminars and practical courses (Schildmann et al. 2017). While the implementation of GTE differed from university to university, GTE’s common impetus was decidedly to teach critical thinking. This is evidenced by the 2009 joint policy paper from the Association for Medical History and the Academy for Ethics in Medicine, which states that “the training objectives of medical studies must include not only specialist medical skills but also critical reflection and responsible application of these skills” (Fachverband Medizingeschichte and Akademie für Ethik 2009, own translation).
As one can take from this passage, GTE was established primarily as a joint teaching project in humanities-led critical reflection for medical students, across three subject areas. However, GTE extends far beyond medical pedagogy. After all, it encompasses institutes, organisational structures, and staff interested in examining health and illness from humanities perspectives. Many scholars working in these institutes have dual training in medicine and humanities, or in several humanities disciplines, and their research routinely transcends what one would intuitively think of as the disciplinary boundaries of history, theory or ethics of medicine.
German GTE institutes currently conduct a wide range of research across various fields and disciplines, including science and technology studies, anthropology, literary and media studies, and art history, to name just a few. Because of this, there are increasing efforts to widen the scope of the field, also by way of its denomination: in recent years, several workshops and conferences have taken place that deliberately relate GTE and medical humanities, arguing for the shared research interests of both fields (see, for example, the references in Fischer and Gadebusch Bondio 2016, 7).
GTE, a German medical humanities? Medical humanities, the new GTE?
The work carried out at GTE institutes can, in my view, be understood as a German version of medical humanities scholarship. By offering humanities courses to medical students, these institutes fulfil a key role originally associated with the Anglo-American medical humanities, while also employing scholars from various humanities disciplines who research diverse topics beyond the perceived disciplinary boundaries of history, theory and ethics of medicine. Does this mean that GTE is equivalent to what is understood as the medical humanities in the UK context? And, more consequentially, does this mean that GTE initiatives and institutes should rename themselves, as was the case with the institute in Bonn? If one were to brush aside these questions with Juliet’s perhaps naively optimistic attitude – “Who cares what’s in a name?” – one would overlook the deep cultural, linguistic, institutional and political complexities involved in academic naming practices. The seemingly simple question of a name, in fact, gives rise to larger and much further-reaching questions about international linguistic hegemony, local academic traditions and global (research) politics.
To stay with the example of Germany, it is certain that GTE’s name and brand must be understood within its specific German academic and institutional context. GTE, as a multi- or transdisciplinary project, emerged from a long-standing disciplinary history of medico-historical scholarship at German medical faculties, predating both GTE and medical humanities. Changing the name to an Anglophone “import” could threaten established structures and could be seen as detrimental to the community of medical historians and ethicists in Germany, who might fear not only losing their discipline’s prerogative in teaching medical students, but also that the field could lose sight of the distinct German (historical) issues at stake in its pedagogy and research.
However, the name can also be perceived as limiting. Despite the broad research produced at GTE institutes, the disciplinary labels of “history,” “theory” and “ethics” inherently structure the kinds of questions asked, potentially excluding other disciplines. While perspectives from literary and cultural studies, as well as fields such as disability and gender studies, are not entirely absent, they are certainly less prominent in GTE institutes than in UK-based medical humanities centres. Moreover, as a uniquely German term, GTE may obscure its thematic connections to the Anglophone medical humanities scene, leading to a perceived lack of research on medicine from humanities perspectives in Germany. This perception may overlook existing structures of GTE institutes that make them attractive to international medical humanities scholarship, such as various models of interdisciplinarity and collaborations between science and art faculties already in place.
Whether German GTE and medical humanities scholars should ultimately retain their established names, unite under “medical humanities,” or create an entirely different label (such as the rarely used “Medizinische Geisteswissenschaften”) remains an open question. Bringing the two fields together under a single label could surely have an energising effect for both communities, fostering collaboration among scholars from diverse backgrounds who are interested in researching medicine, health and illness from humanities perspectives and opening up new avenues of transdisciplinary teaching and research across faculties; however, who should decide what this label should be, and on what argumentative grounds?
Without attempting to provide a definitive answer to this question, this article hopes to have succeeded in addressing two interrelated issues: first, to bring GTE to the attention of the Anglophone medical humanities community, and second, to highlight, in the particular context of medical humanities, some of the cultural, linguistic and institutional aspects of the age-old naming dilemma Juliet so poignantly expressed for us.
About the author
Mona Baie is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and a research associate in the SNSF-funded project “Medical Spaces in Literary Prose of the Long Twentieth Century” at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). She studied medicine, health humanities and literature in Heidelberg, London and Fribourg. Mona can be found on Twitter/X and on BlueSky (monabaie.bsky.social) and can be contacted via email at mona.baie@unifr.ch.
References
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Elsner, Anna M., and Monika Pietrzak-Franger. 2024. Literature and Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fachverband Medizingeschichte and Akademie für Ethik. 2009. Querschnittsbereich Geschichte, Theorie, Ethik der Medizin. Göttingen: Akademie für Ethik. https://www.aem-online.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Publikationen/Stellungnahmen/Grundsatzpapier_GTE_2009.pdf.
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